wonder what happens to his career on January 21st, 2008 [sic]

Date muckup aside, I suspect that in 2009 Paul Krugman will still be a tenured professor at Princeton University, and Megan will still be a lanky bint whose capacity to climb the greasy pole is in negative correlation to her originality of thought.

Of all the impenetrable mysteries of gender difference, the one I find most utterly incomprehensible is shoes. The idea of shoes being something other than functional, an accessory of sorts, just completely confuses me. It’s not like some mysteries presented by women, that you can understand the what, even if you can’t understand the why.

I get a new pair of New Balance cross trainers every six months or so. I have a pair of Merrell boots I had custom made about ten years ago that are by far my favorite shoes, but the fuckers are a tad heavy for everyday wear. And I have a pair of Timberland sandals for most every other occasion.

Of course, as a california born hippie, a great deal of the time I simply don’t wear any shoes at all.

But this desire to have more and more pairs of shoes is so alien to my experience, so hard for me to understand, it’s like an alien culture…

mikey

You hippies don’t care about the Constitution, you twist it to suit your radical anti-American agenda. Come on now do you lefty wimps honestly believe that the first, forth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments provide protection for terrorists? If you do you pansies are even more foolish than I thought.

I have trouble following the first one.

Holy God, I didn’t know that Schoolhouse Rock actually literally set the constitution, verbatim, to a country melody.

If it were up to you hippies there would be no second amendment. Why? Because it doesn’t fit with your politically correct hippie agenda which is based on weakness not on the rugged individualism advocated by our Founding Fathers and still practiced by those of us in the Heartland were the real patriots live. The coast lines are filled with socialist sissies who despise America. If you hippies secede you will not be missed by those of us in the American Heartland.

I wonder what happens to his career on January 21st, 2008?

Aside from muffing the date, she actually makes a semi-interesting point. Hacks n’ fluffers like Charlie Krauthammer have made their living bleating Republicans Good, Democrats Bad! without regard to those boring fact thingies.

Given the obvious amount of care and time they spend on their columns (10 minutes +/- 5) they’ve probably got a bunch of pre-printed Mad Libs style articles for any eventuality. “If only the ____________ Senate would stop/start thwarting President ______________, we would see an end to ______________.”

And they can go on doing it 4Eva no matter who is in office because they can always find something to bitch about because they don’t need to waste time with facts or research or any of that stuff.

The Krugmans of the world might have to go back to their day jobs because they were foolish enough to focus on reality.

I don’t claim to speak for Wolf, but let me note a few things. Her sentence that mentions the Second Amendment consists of two independent clauses joined by a semicolon. The second may very well refer to the Fifth Amendment without naming it by name. As for the first clause and which amendment it refers to, here’s Wolf writing at Firedoglake on October 5, 2007:

Congress shouldn’t just be questioning [Eric] Prince [of Blackwater] about Iraq; it should be prohibiting any activity of mercenaries on our soil, and investigating the crimes committing in tyhe [sic] course of this administration’s determination to gut the Second Amendment and to give the executive his own bloody army of proven torturers, ready to train on citizens here as well as at home.

And here’s Wolf in the comments to her post:

They couldn’t import the violent subjugation of citizens that we exported and trained leaders to perpetrate in Guatemala, Indonesia, and Chile to the US in the past because we had a working Constitution; the Second Amendment kept the people’s representative sin charge of the National Guard; the Fourth Amendment kept the State from listening in to our calls and monitoring our emails; and we forbade torture or abuse of prisoners — most important of all. Once these protections were gutted by OUR representatives nothing could keep the same tactics that we ignored overseas from being directed against us ourselves.

Emphasis hers.

You know, it’s weird. Three or four years ago, I was a pretty well rooted gun control advocate. I wasn’t “ban all guns evars!!1”, but yeah, I can get behind the whole “no full-auto rifles; no armor piercing rounds.”

So, basically, the Bush Administration is what it took to make the Washington survivalist militias sound grounded in sensible thought.

More Wolf on the Second Amendment:

The Founders knew from their own experience of standing armies, responsive only to a tyrant, how dangerous such a situation was; King George’s men — armed with blanket warrants — invaded the colonists’ homes, trashed their possessions, and even raped Colonial women. It was that bitter experience that led them to insist on the second amendment — ‘a well regulated militia’ that was responsive to the people and could not be deployed against the people of the United States by would-be despots. The founders knew that American tyranny was not only possible, it was likely, in the event of weakened checks and balances; and they knew a mercenary army was the advance guard of despots.

Again from Firedoglake (September 27, 2007).

Heh, hippies.

I’m betting Bastian Booger is a Kevin sockpuppet.

Fuck off, Kevin. No one likes you.

And you’re in the killfile.

Jillian hates women.
FACT

As always, I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but, as always, I can’t seem to reconcile all this banter about the Constitution and glorious Bill of Rights, with the recognized and KNOWN FACTS regarding the genocide of the people that were already HERE, while all the noble figuring about freedom and justice for all was going on.

I hate shoes, by the way.

Anyone who wants to institute a police state, martial law or a “state of emergency” in the US has GOT to factor in the HUGE number of highly effective weapons and trained shooters just wandering around the countryside. That certainly does make America kind of dificult to put in the “dictator” column.

Sure, they could co-opt one side or another, likely the “Gun Counter Gomer” contingent, but there is simply no way they can shut down the entire superset of armed resistance.

And the harder they push, the more draconian the methodology, the more violent opposition they will encounter. I don’t have any love for white supremacist militias, but if I’m in the hills fighting Blackwater thugs and some racist out of Coeur d’Alene blows up one of their convoys, I’m certainly not gonna mind. We’ll have to deal with that after the next constitutional convention.

mikey

Interesting choice of an internet handle, even though he misspelled it.

Don’t ask me how I knew that.

‘a well regulated militia’ that was responsive to the people and could not be deployed against the people of the United States by would-be despots.

Which is why I got really antsy when Bush wanted to be able to control the National Guard whenever he deciderated there was a national emergency.

Do. Not. Want.

tsisageya, historical guilt is one thing.

But there is very little we can do about things that happened over a hundred years ago. And anything we CAN do, reparations, etc, cannot be done in the current political environment.

Perhaps the best we can do at this point is to restore something resembling representative constitutional government to the US and then start having a real conversation about how to atone, to whatever extent possible, for the genocide of the indigenous peoples.

But to let our collective guilt constrain our actions at this point plays into the hands of the worst of the oppressors…

mikey

Re: January 21, 2008

That’s the opening day of the California Society of Anesthesiologists’ Winter Hawaiian Seminar. Duh!

The inimitable Marie Gryphon catches Naomi Wolf in a very odd statement–at least, odd if you’re Naomi Wolf:

The implication here is that Naomi Wolf has in the past criticised your 2nd Amendment (and can now be ridiculed for her hypocrisy, or her belated awakening). So I consulted the Great Gazoogle for details. No luck.
Is it possible that the inimical Marie Gryphon was more interested in her own strawman assumptions about Wolf’s beliefs, than in what Wolf might actually have thought and said? I am shocked, shocked.

Megan gets confuzzled by ordinal numbers; moreover, semicolons make her elfin head ache.

semicolons make her elfin head ache.

She deserves a full colon’s worth in a flaming paper bag on her doorstep.

Ooohhh.

Flaming bag of poo. This is good.

I like to collect a five gallon bucket of poo (the Humane society is helpful with this) and wrap it in about two meters of 100 grain detcord and put it out in the front yard. Then deploy the traditional brown paper lunch bag of poo to the front porch. Ignite. Then, when the stomping begins, go ahead and command detonate the fifty or so pounds of poo on the lawn.

Much more dramatic. And you pretty much have an even coating of poo….

mikey

I wouldn’t mind spending January on Kaanapali Beach getting sedated . . . would I have to attend any of the seminars?

See, this is why I love mikey.

Of all the impenetrable mysteries of gender difference, the one I find most utterly incomprehensible is shoes.

Cute shoes are just so….cute!

Aww, there are all kinds of feminists out there, though some try to keep everyone on a very, very tight leash. I actually minored in Women’s Studies accidentally by taking too many classes in the department, and I was frequently the one playing devil’s advocate. Actually, I just wrote another reminder that the whole not shaving thing is NOT cute when fair-weather white feministas advocate it to Mediterranean chicks who look like gorilla women within two days of not seeing a razor.

But as for guns, I’ve never understood the rampant hatred for the right to bear arms, but then I was being educated in Lawrence Kansas and sort of liked old Bill Burroughs’ “Shotgun Art”. Weird times. Either way, after the many insane statements lately in the “LGF vs. Gates of Vienna Wars”, I really think that there will be a surge in gun sales to formerly gunless liberals. Maybe it’s just because I shoot straight, but those people scare me, and I want to at least have the same weapons. But then I am a refugee from Wingnuttia, so I’ve been seeing some weird ass shit go down.

“Heartland” is the word-of-the-month for the paid troll battalion. Do you suppose they have notices up on the locker room bulletin-board? Right next to the notice for who wins this month’s personalized parking space for number of posts?

“It’s gotta be the shoes!“

You hippies condemn President Bush for his supposed use of the National Guard to oppress his own people, however the same people who love to criticize President Bush said nay a word when President Blowjob and that communist thug Janet Reno sent the FBI to murder innocent men, women and children in Waco Texas and Ruby Ridge Idaho merely for freely practicing their religion and obeying the second amendment. Janet Reno was a murderer and a disgrace for an Attorney General, she should be charged with first degree murder and hanged.

But this desire to have more and more pairs of shoes is so alien to my experience
Next, Mikey, you’ll be suggesting that one or two cats is a sufficient number and anything more than that is non-functional.

innocent men, women and children in Waco Texas merely for freely practicing their religion and obeying the second amendment

AKA molesting children and hoarding illegal weapons.

the one I find most utterly incomprehensible is shoes

I’m with ya 101%.

This isn’t addressed to anyone in particular but I do think that if a hypothetical person were to hypothetically blame Clinton for Ruby Ridge it would blow that hypothetical person’s cover as a spoof.

Or at least cover it in an even layer of poo.

Individuals “obeying” the second amendment, a stricture on government power?

They know the words, but not what they mean.

mikey, this may answer your question:

and as we all know, asymmetrical poo is gauche.

and as we all know, asymmetrical poo is gauche.

But if you’re of an artistic temperament poo could be gouache.

“In May 1961 Manzoni defecated into 90 small cans and had them sealed with the text Artist’s Shit. In the following years they have spread to various art collections all over the world and netted large prizes. Many of them have also exploded, maybe because of corrosion and expanding gases.”

I don’t get the shoe thing either, especially when the “cutest” ones always seem to be the most painful, & often turn milady’s feet into one large corn/bunion combo. I thought the purpose of footwear was to avoid pain & damage to the lower extremities.

This typed as a man who finds feet the least interesting or appealing part of the human anatomy.

Bastion, how do you know what people said about Ruby Ridge or Waco?

You weren’t around to hear it.

This typed as a man who finds feet the least interesting or appealing part of the human anatomy.

There is something to be gained for the heterosexual male who can pretend feet are lovely.

The “Conservative [gLibertarian] Guide to the Bill of Rights” is an hilariously thin book.

As mikey implies in detail, there is a reason why the First Amendment is followed by the Second Amendment.

Jillian, as long as McArdle mcardles the Bill of Rights as nine amendments interpolated by Liebrals around the second, I will defend your right to apply the Smack.

I mean, Ben Franklin backed this shizzle. It’s the only reason I can forgive him for fucking up electrical polarity.

But to let our collective guilt constrain our actions at this point plays into the hands of the worst of the oppressors…

1. I never used the term guilt, but I can work with it.

2. What’s that you say about the worst of the oppressors, Mikey? Oppressors? Which oppressors would that be, Mikey? The United States Government? White folks, with guns, from Europe?

3. In Orwell’s book 1984, Winston Smith is tortured in the Ministry of Love, and finally “cured” , by the prospect of rats eating his face. He then betrays his love, Julia, by screaming: Do it to Julia!

4. So, oppression, theft, and murder are worse when done to you NOW, than when it was done to someone else THEN? And you still want to hold the Constitution up over your head, clutched in your fist, and wave it at me?

Excuse me. I have a war on Christmas to go wage….except at my daughter’s house. This year I have promised to be her Christmas Beeyotch.

” the same people who love to criticize President Bush said nay a word when President Blowjob and that communist thug Janet Reno sent the FBI to murder innocent men, women and children in Waco Texas and Ruby Ridge Idaho……..”

The events at Ruby Ridge took place on August 21, 1992, almost half a year before Clinton took office.

The Waco statement is too stupid to comment on.

Arky, I like your tack here. Your name as well, but yes, also where you’re going with this…LOL.

Incidentally, that’s what I call the growing phenomenon of fundies in suburbia: Pottery Barn Ruby Ridge.

Bubba, is it really just pretend? Come on now…

Bubba, is it really just pretend? Come on now…

Yes, I actually really will give a long foot massage because the feet of ladies are precious, delicate, and perfect in every way.

ah mcwrong

so…naomi wolf is assumed (by someone else) to have changed an opinion in a way that is counterintuitive to either a)wolf’s previous work or b) the general feeling of the people with whom wolf is associated–i.e. gore as a stand-in for “teh left”.

i see various ascertainable facts: has wolf opined in past on the 2nd amendment? is the other party’s reading of wolf accurate (perhaps there is a semi-colon that changes the sentence’s meaning, for instance)? and can that fact be ascertained? further, is there truly a general consensus amongst those for whom wolf has worked in the past in re the 2nd amendment, assuming that the reading of wolf is correct? (is gore the only one she’s ever consulted for is a worthwhile question as well)

now some might say that a tool has been invented to find out whether such claims are true or false. some might call it the great gazoogle, for instance.

i merely say that the atlantic is debased by the presence of mcardle every day, that having an F student (literally, if i were grading her well over half her posts are straight-up Fs) on your blog is detrimental to your success as a magazine. i mean fuck the nation is STUCK with cockburn, and they fired hitchens. and hitchens and cockburn are great writers who are just crazy. what exactly, EXACTLY, is the reason this loser has this job? she’s woefully overmatched and underqualified, undeserving and pathetic. she’s an embarrassment.

of course, i must add that the atlantic that was laying around the apartment i stayed at this week had the risibly stupid “who wins and who loses in global warming?” article from terminally asinine gregg easterbrook. so fuck em.

I’m with you on the shoe thing M. Bouffant, and I’m female. If its not comfy then to hell with it. I’m happily past the age where you get roped into buying some ugly dress with hideous shoes in order to be in a wedding. The 6 inch heeled cockroach killers I had to buy to fit into a wedding of all over 6 feet tall giants was truly my last adventure with cruel shoes.

They actually had a cover that said “who wins and who loses in global warming?” Let’s see, who wins:

1. mango farmers in Saskatchewan
2. ….

Well, that’s about all the winners I could think of, everyone else is pretty much fucked.

This typed as a man who finds feet the least interesting or appealing part of the human anatomy.

You try walking around the Mall in a pair of shoes.

Sorry, as an inveterate middle child, I have to point out that we shouldn’t slight our pedophaelic friends.

And full disclosure, I’ve never found toe-sucking an impediment (only word I could think of) to getting laid.

But yeah, personally, my Oxfords are as exotic as I get.

I can, however, wax poetic about arch support.

You left-wing wackos have no idea what your talking about. Why don’t you all go smoke some pot and leave the politics to real men.

Why don’t you all go smoke some pot and leave the politics to real men.

Like Larry Criag

And you still want to hold the Constitution up over your head, clutched in your fist, and wave it at me?

Yep. I do. And I very well fucking WILL. I’ve seen people blown into little bits over that document. I’ve had people shoot MOTHERFUCKING MACHINE GUNS at me over that document.

You truly want to argue with my right to take the position that’s a beautiful document, and people are fallible, and it doesn’t always go right, but ideals and concepts are worth defending?

Then lemme ask something, babe. How much skin you got in the game?

Huh?

How many people have you killed for your beliefs?

How many people have tried to kill you?

How many nights have you held the line? Huh? Talk to me.

Now I know that’s unfair. I KNOW you can do well, and do good, without going to war. But here’s what you can’t do. You can’t lecture me. Because I’ve been there. I’ve spent my humanity over America’s stupidity. But also, and NEVER fucking forget this, we spent our lives for YOU too. We spent our blood over the beauty of the ideal. You can piss on that. Frankly, I don’t give a shit. I guess I do a fair amount of that myself.

You don’t have to recognize, my dear, but you’ll NEVER win this argument.

And it would be better for you, and your argument, if you did recognize the blood spilled for you….

mikey

Full disclosure, I’ve never found speaking about impediments to “getting laid” to be all that valuable or interesting. In fact, I find it rather offensive and gauche.
But then, I did say I was leaving to go wage war, didn’t I?

Okay then. For REAL, this time….

oops, not quite.

Mikey, go fuck yourself, wasichu asshole. There IS NO ARGUMENT.

Stupid motherfucker.

Wow.

I’m convinced.

You have a gift for argument, tsisgeya.

Sell the story, babe…

mikey

D’OH!

Podophilia

Sorry, spelling’s a chore. Not accusing anyone of liking Rick Moran.

Sorry. Oops. Sorry.

Is it just me, or does tsisageya seem to have some anger issues?

Mo’s Bike Shop smells like shit

Oh I wish, it’s so fucking dry here in the land of G’ville Gold.

I have heard that mikey smells like the good shit, but that’s a bit of a pedal from here.

tsisageya (not like I think I’m addressing someone else), my ancestors were assholes. I know that very well from the most recent examples. Whaddaya want me to do about it? Ignore it so you can have your wingnut circle-jerk in peace? You are making a lame attempt to goad people who want to be honest about history. For me personally, “History is a nightmare from which I’m trying to awake.” That’s not original, but neither is history. So take your collective guilt and go fuck yourself? Eh?

I mean, there’s no impediment to that, is there?

Is it just me, or does tsisageya seem to have some anger issues?

Here’s some funny lunacy.

Wow, Righteous, Tsisageya’s an actual crackpot. How did she stumble in here? Let’s hope that, like Bruce, she will not return, although I still miss the heck out of Bruce.

Wait, Easterbrook writes for The Atlantic now?
I either missed that or intentionally blocked it from becoming conscious.
Jebus, fuck.
I guess the question now is how fully its legacy can be covered with feces.

Oh, and Tsisageya is clearly a Beth.

The only time I’ve ever felt that angry was the mix-up with the superglue and the haemorrhoid cream.

But if you’re of an artistic temperament poo could be gouache
You’re all talking around the real issue. No-one’s mentioned the elephant poo in the corner of the room.

That there’s a real cute cartoon but I have to take exception to the scene showing how, back when they wrote the Constitution, they were “securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity,” as illustrated by the little woman dropping a ballot into a ballot box. Sadly, no, her particular blessing was not secured by the Founding Fathers but instead hard-won by Suffragists in a political struggle lasting over a century.

2nd Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I always thought that this meant that an army (regulated militia) is required by the government to do its job (necessary for the security of a free state), and it was implied that this posed a danger to the citizens since the government could use that army against its own citizens. I think in the days of the revolution, this was so obvious, it could be left unsaid, and therefore, for the citizens to be able to protect themselves from the army of their own government, they would always have the right to own arms in order to protect themselves.

In other words, I think the amendment says, “you have the right to own guns so that you can shoot the soldiers if your own government becomes too much of a police state.” or rather, “if faced with another Kent State, shoot back.”

It sounds pretty crazy now, but remember, it was written by a bunch of revolutionaries who just waged war against the King of England, who, habitually, shot at and killed soldiers of what was, in name, their own government and they felt that future generations should still have that option, if, like the British, the new government got a little too big for its britches.

Regarding the above, in the current state of the US, I think there is no need for an average citizen to have armor piercing bullets and assault rifles, but if the citizens of the US ever had to overthrow the government and take on the US army, then, you’d have to admit, they’d come in handy. Personally, I believe in peaceful change through democracy, but this last administration has really scared me as to what the future state of our government could be, and in the current state, the citizens are no match for the US military. I don’t think all the revolutionaries who made up the ranks of our founding fathers would like that one bit.

Tsisageya:

As always, I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but, as always, I can’t seem to reconcile all this banter about the Constitution and glorious Bill of Rights, with the recognized and KNOWN FACTS regarding the genocide of the people that were already HERE, while all the noble figuring about freedom and justice for all was going on.

This misses the point. Let us take as read that by the time the Constitution was written and ratified, and for some time thereafter, the people who put it on paper and made it the supreme law of the land had engaged and continued to engage in some horrendous behavior toward the natives who had preceded them (as well as toward pretty much anybody who was not of European descent).

Please explain, even assuming all that, how it could possibly invalidate the principles they wrote down. To be sure, they didn’t always act in accord with those principles; but in those cases, the problem is with the people and their actions, not the principles. Were they hypocritical? Perhaps. Were they culturally blinkered to the point where they would not have recognized the hypocrisy of their treatment of indigenous peoples and others? Probably. Would they be astounded to find out that today, those actions seem woefully inconsistent with the Constitution they created? Maybe.

But the failings of human beings — even acting en masse as a nation — do not render the principles or the words of the Constitution null and void. Many of us actually believe that the Constitution has meaning and sets forth the correct and proper principles for governing a nation. How is that difficult to reconcile with knowledge of the wrongs of history? And what are you suggesting — should we abandon the Constitution because those who wrote it failed to live up to its ideals?

OK, so I’m two days late to this thread and two months late to what it linked to, but still, this struck me. I followed the link at the bottom of the original post, and I followed that to a link to some grammarpolice place, and the writer said something… odd.

Confidential to Sadly, No!: I was so thrilled to get a link from your page—S,N! is one of very few sites that I will read before I have even put on pants— so I was saddened when it turned out to be merely part of a slam on Megan McArdle. Which is fine, whatever, she’s my friend who says crazy things about torture.

Um, what the fuck? Call me an ideologue, call me sheltered, whatever, but I would have a hard time being, friends with someone “who says crazy things about torture.” To be clear here, remember that we aren’t talking about entirely hypothetical late-night rambling talks in college about which none of us really know much. And we aren’t talking about vague reports from distant prisons in a country with a hundred other problems as well in 2003. We’re talking about professional and semiprofessional pundits talking about national policy. If I became good friends with someone knowing they like that, I’d think less of myself. If a good friend of mine started thinking like that, the friendship would become very strained.